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Posts published by Robert Dallek

Perhaps the biggest surprise the Obama administration has faced in its first 100 days has not been the dismal state of the economy or the difficulties abroad with Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, but rather the grudging cooperation of the Democratic Congress.

The president could take a lesson from L.B.J. on how to bend fractious Congressional Democrats to his will.

Lyndon Johnson could have warned Barack Obama that winning the support of the 535 senators and representatives, even if a majority of them share your party affiliation, wouldn’t be easy. This is especially the case after eight years of an administration that tried to reinstate the bad old days of the Imperial Presidency — using executive privilege and signing statements to bypass the legislature. Read more…

On Nov. 24, 1963, two days after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, President Lyndon B. Johnson met with his principal national security advisers to consider the most volatile issue he had inherited: Vietnam. A coup at the beginning of November — approved by the Kennedy administration — had toppled Ngo Dinh Diem’s government and taken his life. Concerns about the ability of his untested successors to withstand Vietcong insurgents backed by Ho Chi Minh’s North Vietnamese Communist regime gave Johnson a sense of urgency about an issue that could threaten United States interests abroad and undermine his standing at home.

Johnson’s first concern was to assure that he was acting in concert with Kennedy’s plans. But no one could provide authoritative advice on J.F.K.’s intentions. By increasing the number of military advisers in Vietnam from 685 to 16,700, Kennedy had indicated his determination to preserve Saigon’s autonomy. His agreement to a change of government in hopes of finding a leader who could command greater popular support than Ngo Dinh Diem seemed to confirm Kennedy’s commitment to preventing a Communist victory.

Lyndon Johnson tried to give his nation guns and butter. In the end, he provided neither.

At the same time, however, Kennedy had signaled his intentions to reduce America’s military role in Vietnam by directing that 1,000 of the advisers be brought home by the end of 1963. He had also rejected requests from his military chiefs for the use of American ground forces in the fighting. In addition, he had told several advisers that he intended to withdraw American military personnel from Vietnam after the 1964 election. Read more…

At the start of his presidential term in 1913, Woodrow Wilson said prophetically, “It would be the irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs.” Although he managed to win passage of major progressive reforms, including the Federal Reserve Act, his presidency was soon overwhelmed by problems abroad: first in Mexico, with American troops seizing the port of Vera Cruz in April 1914, and then in Europe, where the First World War erupted that August.

Obama will learn, as his predecessors did, that foreign crises are an unavoidable part of the job.

Likewise, every president since Franklin Roosevelt found himself compelled to focus on foreign dangers. Unlike Wilson, F.D.R. was not averse to fixing his attention on overseas troubles. But during his first hundred days, when the Great Depression pushed rising tensions abroad to the recesses of his thinking, Roosevelt, declaring first things first, put economic nationalism above international cooperation and gave the back of his hand to the London Economic Conference. Read more…

Barack Obama seems focused on the starts of the Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt presidencies as guides for action — appointing “a team of rivals” to his cabinet and promising immediate steps, a newer New Deal, to revive the economy.

Mr. Obama’s use of history, however, defies G.K. Chesterton’s astute observation that “people who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.” There are dangers in relying on past remedies to meet current problems: Generals too often fighting the last war is just one case in point.

Still, as he looks to the past, is there anything that Barack Obama might want to recall from Lyndon B. Johnson’s first 100 days as president? No and Yes.

Both Johnson and President Obama entered office during times of crisis: Diminished confidence in the country’s institutions was palpable in November 1963 and is evident again in January 2009.

About

As Barack Obama readies to take the office of president, which of his predecessors offers the best model for getting off on the right foot? The 100 Days blog seeks to answer just that question during Mr. Obama's first three months in office. Five presidential biographers will discuss the early days of five 20th-century presidents – Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan – shedding new light on the struggles faced by those men entering the Oval Office and comparing their experiences with those Mr. Obama will face in his first 100 days.

A close looks at polls of reactions to Ronald Reagan’s first few months in office provide striking parallels to what polls now find about opinions of President Obama. A consideration of the Reagan experience may well give some clues as to what lies ahead for the 44th president. Read more…